Analysis of poem #17
David Plantinga 1972 (Sherbrooke)
The trouble started on the day
After the day before.
Youth and hope and love decay,
And regret won’t restore.
It seems this old and weary world
Holds much more bad than good.
I’d have assayed, but I was hurled
In this life before I could.
A world of cloud and bitterness,
A life of scrape and thorn,
So who would ever acquiesce
Ever to be born?
Because briars outnumber flowers
By ten to one at least,
Weakness humbles mighty powers.
Famine goes before the feast.
But feasts are more than fillings ups,
And hunger’s just a pinch.
And emptiness can’t stopper cups,
And straitening can’t cinch.
Bounty and joy are plenitude,
And destitution lack,
So revel in what’s nice, or lewd,
No loss can take it back.
A single flower fortifies
To brush away the burs.
Striving wins because it tries.
Forlorn despairing errs.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFXF GHGH IJIJ AKXK EEXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 01010101 100101 1010101 001101 11110101 111111 1111111 0110111 01110100 011101 1111001 10111 01101010 111111 10101010 1010101 11111101 01101 01001101 0111 100111 01001 11000111 111111 010101 110101 1010111 010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 833 |
Words | 145 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 91 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 21 |
About this poem
Terence, this is stupid stuff: no beer here, just entropy. I put a trochee in the second foot of the first line of the fourth stanza for the harshness of it. I also meant the double plural in the first line of the fifth stanza. I also meant to double up on the “evers”.
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